Customer satisfaction Chinese style
(20 September 2006 – China) Australian banks have been talking up their efforts to improve customer satisfaction but would they go as far as their Chinese counterparts by allowing customers to rate individual staff members "on the spot"?
Spotted on a recent trip to South West China, Bank of China has installed customer satisfaction "terminals" in each of its branches, encouraging customers to leave their "valuable opinions" on customer facing bank staff.
Customers can decide whether the service they receive is "satisfactory", "average" or "dissatisfied" (sic), and press the relevant button which contributes to a rating out of five, displayed by illuminated stars.
It was interesting to note, however, that in each of the Bank of China branches your correspondent visited (usually to inquire why the ATM wasn’t working, which was typically because there was no money in them), that no staff member had a score of more than two stars out of five. In fact, some had no illuminated stars at all.
Did the rating system appear to inspire branch staff to greater levels of customer service? Difficult to tell without having experienced Bank of China’s customer service before the rating terminals were installed, of course, but if they had acted as an incentive it wasn’t obvious.
Probably a safe bet that staff of the state owned bank (the third largest in China) were not being KPI-d against their "star" ratings.
How long before we see such an initiative in Australia?
Customers can decide whether the service they receive is "satisfactory", "average" or "dissatisfied" (sic), and press the relevant button which contributes to a rating out of five, displayed by illuminated stars.
It was interesting to note, however, that in each of the Bank of China branches your correspondent visited (usually to inquire why the ATM wasn’t working, which was typically because there was no money in them), that no staff member had a score of more than two stars out of five. In fact, some had no illuminated stars at all.
Did the rating system appear to inspire branch staff to greater levels of customer service? Difficult to tell without having experienced Bank of China’s customer service before the rating terminals were installed, of course, but if they had acted as an incentive it wasn’t obvious.
Probably a safe bet that staff of the state owned bank (the third largest in China) were not being KPI-d against their "star" ratings.
How long before we see such an initiative in Australia?
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